This disclosure relates in general to copier/printers, and more particularly, to feeding a continuous web of material from a roll to a sheet fed printing device such as a conventional sheet fed printer.
Generally, labels are printed by a continuous printing process utilizing a roll label print media. Generally the continuous process for printing labels has been reserved to the flexographic, gravure and thermal printing processes. Flexographic printing, also known as aniline printing, is a form of relief printing in which a slightly raised image of the label is formed on a printing plate by engraving. Each plate has a high initial cost and has a limited life, requiring periodic replacement. Generally, a print run must be on the order of thousands of labels in order for the print run to be cost effective. In gravure printing, the printing area is etched into a surface of a plate or a metal cylinder. Generally, a print run for a gravure system is on the order of millions of copies in order to be cost effective. Thus, gravure systems suffer from the same drawbacks for a short print run as do flexographic systems. Thermal printing is a non-impact printing process that uses heat to register an impression on paper. The major drawback to thermal printing compared to flexographic and gravure printing is the relatively low quality of the printed image, especially on print media that is not specialty paper. Further, thermal printing equipment is also very expensive to purchase and to maintain as the print heads must be cleaned frequently to remove melted wax or burned-on ink.
Prior art systems have previously attempted to address the feeding of a continuous roll of paper to a laser printer in a number of ways. In the prior art, sheet fed printer have been redesigned with feeding and cutting mechanisms that are integrated with the printing device. However, such redesigns tend to forgo the efficiencies and low costs of conventional laser printing devices.
For the reasons stated above, and for other reasons stated below which will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon reading and understanding the present specification there is need in the art for systems, apparatus, and/or methods to convey a continuous web of print media through a marking station.